In Plain Sight
by Lyre of Sheliak
Summary: An origin story for Mamma Gkika's. Written for MadameHardy as part of Trick or Treat Exchange 2019.


It was obvious from the beginning that Gkika would have to be the one to stay behind. She was the only general who could.

(She wasn't the only general who could pass for human, but _he_ was needed elsewhere. And for all his skills, the sneaky one couldn't do what Gkika could, hiding in noise and color and bold fakery. He wasn't one for drama, and this situation called for it.)

The others would have to leave; they'd be needed to lead the armies in exile, and Klaus Wulfenbach was canny enough to notice if they tried to hide too much from him. But he'd expect them to hide _something_; a suspicious man like him would be disappointed if they didn't, and keep looking. And Gkika was quite willing to be the obvious secret, and let another one pass him by.

So when the Jägermonsters strode out the gates, six Generals at the head of the group in a grim formation, Gkika's name was on the list of the Castle's dead, and she herself was already in the tunnels below.

Construction started the next day, a dozen trustworthy locals renovating the old bar and its truly impressive multilevel wine cellars into what she needed it to be.

Most of the Jägers had taken up hobbies, in the years when their Heterodynes hadn't wanted them. Knitting, mostly, or slam poetry. Gkika's hobby had been the bar.

She'd inherited it about five years ago, or rather the army had. The original proprietor, an ornery minor Spark with a focus on spirits, had died of something startlingly natural, leaving a will that hadn't been updated since old Saturnus's day, before the man's son had ridden off with the Jägers. That son had taken the Brau and lived, only to meet his end fighting the Wulfenbachs—not long before they'd had peace there, not that they'd ever known what to do with it. So the bar had come to the son's heirs: his brothers, and his sisters. And her.

Gkika had been bored stiff in those days, of course, like the rest of them. But as a General, she had to set a good example, so she'd put a good face on it. And as a General, she could say "Vell, if dot's how it iz…" and stake a claim on something that technically came to the army as a whole.

It had come to the army anyway; they'd been her primary clientele from the start, along with the few brave humans that rode with them. She'd never formally renamed the place, but of course the Jägers called it Gkika's.

It had been a very good distraction, over the years. For her, and for her boyz and girlz.

And now, it would distract someone else.

Above, Gkika's shabby old bar became a perfect gilded tourist trap. Below, she built sturdier, solid enough to handle Jägers in a good mood. Below even that went the hospital section, with all the defenses she could engineer—just in case. She was no Spark, but she'd spent her whole life among them, and some things rubbed off.

And of course, she began recruiting: dancers, barmaids, a cook. Locals all.

This was too important to take risks with outsiders.

With so many humans involved (there were plenty of constructs in town, but most of them could no more pass for human than Gkika's peers), she had to consider their safety. Gkika put in an order for discrete death rays with a stun setting (no use inviting trouble with the Baron's men) with a local minor Spark. There was always trouble in a bar—especially a tourist bar—and she wanted her staff able to handle themselves.

And then she opened her doors.

The tourists flooded in, and with a little encouragement they made enough noise to drown out even Gkika's first patients. Within a year, it was as if Mamma Gkika's had been there forever. It was an institution. And if Gkika casually mentioned her fellow generals sometimes, well, it wasn't strange if she mentioned her illustrious former patrons, was it?

It helped, of course, that the tourists didn't know much about the old Mechanicsburg.

They'd been coming for a few years now, since the Heterodyne Boys' legend had started to overrule older, darker tales. But they'd come slowly at first, and most from distant lands. Those nearer by had taken longer to get over their healthy fear of the place.

Some knew about the old Jäger bar; some even knew that its proprietor had been a General named Gkika. But at a distance, in a fine dress and finer hair, surrounded by her girls in their costumes—no one would take Gkika for a General now. Not if she didn't want them to.

Easy enough to let people assume that the name was a happy accident, or another bit of trickery. Easy enough to hide the real Jäger among the fakes, and the real past among half-remembered rumors.

The hospital section grew more crowded with every year; the bar above grew louder to compensate. With every army Jäger too injured to fight on, she heard from her peers on the Castle; and each time, the news was the same: _No changes. No Heterodyne. Keep waiting. _

Gkika tended her patients, kept them too busy to despair—and herself, too.

Sometimes it was difficult. But at least she still had her hobby.


End file.
